Movie Premiere

A well-dressed crowd gathers under the marquee of the Rivoli Theatre in New York for the premiere of “The Sound of Music” on March 2, 1965.

A tuneful, heartwarming story, “The Sound of Music” is based on the real life story of the Von Trapp Family singers. Despite mixed reviews, the film starring Julie Andrews would become the highest grossing film of 1965, and by the end of the following year it was the top box-office movie of all time.

Bosley Crowther, movie critic for The Times, wrote, “The fact that “The Sound of Music” ran for three and a half years on Broadway, despite the perceptible weakness of its quaintly old-fashioned book, was plainly sufficient assurance for the producer-director Robert Wise to assume that what made it popular in the theater would make it equally popular on the screen. That was a cheerful abundance of kirche-k’Û÷_che-kinder sentiment and the generally melodic felicity of the Richard Rodgers-Oscar Hammerstein 2d musical score. As a consequence, the great-big color movie Mr. Wise has made from it, and which was given a great-big gala opening at the Rivoli last night, comes close to being a careful duplication of the show as it was done on the stage, even down to its operetta pattern, which predates the cinema age.”